Column: Saw helped shape Tex's triangle

Legendary Kansas State and long-time NBA assistant Tex Winter was honored prior to K-State game with Virginia Tech this past Tuesday. On Sunday the inventor of the triangle offense that helped 10 teams win NBA titles will be honored again with induction into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in Kansas City.

The principles of the triangle offense can be replayed on film, drawn on chalkboards and analyzed by basketball purists.

But innovations Tex Winter made to the triple-post alignment can be traced loosely to his early housing accommodations on the streets of Manhattan.

When Winter, who will be inducted Sunday into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in Kansas City, Mo., passed on a chance to be a track assistant for his alma mater, Southern Cal, and instead accepted a job on the Kansas State basketball staff under Jack Gardner, he needed a place to live.

On his $3,000 salary, how-to became how now.

Basic blueprints were available then for home construction. Find a lot, saw the lumber, drive the hardware and ... well, new houses were never that simple to build. Winter required some help. So he recruited a couple of able-bodied freshmen with whom he was quite familiar, Ernie Barrett and Ed Head.

"He needed physical labor for help, and we were around that summer," Barrett recalled. "We weren't doing anything. He asked if we didn't mind doing things work-wise, and we said, 'Sure, we'll help.' It was no big deal, because we really loved Tex."

Payment was never specific. Perhaps the NCAA should be alerted, though any statute of limitations has long passed. Besides, in the late 1940s, no one would bother investigating how an assistant coach recompensed a couple of players for honest work. Truth is, the compensation may have produced a good laugh.

For their efforts, Barrett and Head were given a 1929 Plymouth owned by Winter.

"You could practically lie down head to toe it had such a huge back seat," recalled Barrett, who at 6-foot-3 became an All-America guard who is affectionately known as Mr. K-State. "We'd put a dollar worth of gas in that thing and picked up guys all over the place."

Several players lived in units on the west side of old Memorial Stadium, where the Wildcats played football at the time.

"Ed and I were doing stuff with each other all the time," Barrett said, so no squabbles ever erupted over who got to use the car.

"The guys were tickled, because they had something to get around in and oh, did we have fun," recalled Head's widow, Meredith, a longtime Topekan. "Tex and (wife) Nancy would have us over once in awhile to eat and then he'd show you the house. He'd show you every bedroom, all the details, and he didn't do a bad job."

Good enough that Winter's youngest son, Brian, learned the carpentry trade and is skilled in all the crafts, including cabinetry.

While he acknowledges his father, the legendary coach, was better as a rough carpenter, some of the basketball concepts Tex revolutionized — he played for the inventor of the triple-post, Sam Barry, at USC — were rooted in his construction skills.

"Dad was always pretty practical about a lot of things," said Brian, who recalled living as a youth in another Manhattan house his father built. "He liked architecture and enjoyed geometry. His triangle offense, with all its angles and the spacing on the floor, he has a mind for those things."

Winter left K-State to become the youngest head coach in the country in 1951 for Marquette. He guided his first club there to the National Catholic Championship in his first season. A story from that event quickly circulated upon his return to Kansas State, where Winter became head coach in 1953.

"Marquette was playing a close game in that tournament and had a timeout with less than a minute to play," Barrett said. "Someone said, 'Let's give a Hail Mary.' And Tex said, 'To hell with Mary, let's go out and win this game.' "

Win he did.

In 15 seasons as K-State's head coach, Morice Fredrick Winter — born Feb. 25, 1922, near Wellington, Texas — won 262 games while guiding the Wildcats to eight conference championships and two Final Four bids. On Saturday, approximately 60 former players gathered at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Mo., for a dinner to honor Winter, 88. Barrett and John 'Hoot' Gibson represented the 1951 Final Four squad, the last season Winter served as a K-State assistant.

Of course, his time as an NBA assistant is much celebrated. He worked alongside Phil Jackson on 10 championship teams, six with the Chicago Bulls and four with the Los Angeles Lakers.

The merits of his coaching, valued by two of the NBA's all-time greats, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, will again be weighed this weekend in terms of a spot in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. Winter is in that shrine as a contributor but deserves induction for his 60-plus years in coaching.

"That's what he assumes he is, and that's what he did for the game," Jackson said. "And even in my situation, as a lot of people say that we've never had an assistant coach for a pro team in the Hall of Fame, this guy is a legitimate coach regardless of whether he was an assistant coach in the NBA or a head coach in college.

"He was the guy that was the motivator of the team, and skills and drills. He worked with the Chicago Bulls and here with the Lakers, and was a vital, important part of what we did as an organization in both cases."

No matter what level Winter coached at, Jackson added, "he's always had a thirst and lust for the game to be played the right way under the right conditions."

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